Half Changed World

Today’s book is Marriage, a History: from Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz.  Coontz’s thesis is that all of the recent phenomena that are often portrayed as signs of "the end of marriage" as a social institution — delayed marriage, increased divorce rates, out-of-wedlock childbearing — are the natural consequences of the transformation of marriage into a relationship grounded in love and intimacy.  Once society stops seeing marriage as simply a mechanism for creating alliances between families, determining the inheritance of property, and controlling both physical and human resources, and starts portraying it as a expression of emotional connection, it becomes hard to argue that people should stay married if they’re no longer in love. In Coontz’s word, marriage has become treasured but "optional."

While focusing mostly on Western Europe, Coontz surveys the huge range of social institutions that we lump together with the label of "marriage" and points out how many of the conditions that we think of as inherent aspects of "traditional marriage" (prohibitions on premarital sex, incest taboos, sexual fidelity, restriction of inheritance to legitimate children, difficulty of divorce) are actually contingent choices, accepted at some historical periods but not at others.

The book covers several thousand years of history and thus is necessarily a quick summary of each period.  Overall, I enjoyed the book and found it a quick read. I didn’t object to the fast pace until the very end, when it felt like Coontz assumed that her audience had already read her previous book, The Way We Never Were. Coontz claims that the specific circumstances of the 60s and 70s — second wave feminism, improved access to birth control, stagnant male wages and growing female earning potention — accelerated the changes, but weren’t necessary for them to occur.

Coontz consistently offers political and economic explanations for why different societies had different moral standards.  I was quite intrigued by her argument that the "separate spheres" story about gender roles developed as a response to the strain that democracy placed on the old assumptions that women were inherently inferior and subordinated.  I was also fascinated by her claim that as early as the beginning of the 19th century, different classes were developing different expectations around the timing of work and marriage — and different moral standards that went with them:

"A shotgun wedding was not a huge problem for people in rural occupations if the young couple had access to the resources needed to set up a new household.  As for unskilled and semi-skilled laborers, whose earning power had often peaked by the end of their teens, it could be an advantage to marry and have children early, because after only a short period of dependence, the children could enter the labor force and increase total household income."

"But for middle-class parents, an unexpected marriage was a bigger problem.  To achieve success in the expanding category of middle-class occupations, a man had to have an education or serve a long period of training in his craft or profession…. This made deferred gratification a cherished principle of middle-class family strategy…. Central to this internal moral order was an unprecedented emphasis on female purity and chastity."

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I was quite amused last week to look at the Washington Post Book Review and see that they had given this book to none other than Judith Warner to review.  This review mostly serves to confirm Jennifer Weiner’s claim that reviews are more about the reviewer than the book.  Warner concludes: "Relationships between men and women, she [Coontz] implies, are basically healthy — probably better than they’ve ever been in the past. It’s our society that’s sick." 

Anne at EconoMom wrote this week about the best decisions she’s ever made (as judged by maximized utility, or happiness).  She suggests making a list and sharing it with your spouse.  She then writes:

"Of course, you know you have to put ‘marrying my spouse’ at number one on the list, which is where it would be anyway, Rick, in case you’re wondering."

Nine years ago today, T and I got married.  And yes, it was the best decision I’ve ever made.  He’s my friend, my lover, my partner, my co-parent.  He makes me laugh, gives me backrubs, and believes in me more than I believe in myself.  Whatever life throws at us, I’m very glad to have him at my side.  Happy anniversary, sweetie. 

The part that blows my mind is that T and I started dating when we were 18.   I feel like I barely know the adolescent I was then.  T’s grown up a lot too.  And yet, we somehow had the luck or judgment to find each other and to stay together.  It’s not the life pattern I would every have predicted for myself, but it’s worked out very well for us.

For the record, my other nine top utility maximizing decisions, in chronological order, are:

1. Taking David Montgomery’s American Labor History classes.  They changed my life.
2. Not going to law school.
3. Taking my current job.
4. Taking up running and joining the Penguin Brigade. 
5. Buying our house when we did.
6. Having D.
7. Going to Africa with my family, even though it meant taking 14+ hour plane rides with a 20 month old.
8. Having N.
9. Starting this blog. 

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Light blogging ahead this weekend; we’ve got a guest staying with us.  She’s a good friend from college who I don’t see very often, and I probably won’t take the time to write while she’s here.

Anyone who spends any time at a playground will discover that even at a very young age, gender differences start to show up between boys and girls in how they play. I’ve written before about how — in spite of the non-traditional gender roles in my family — my sons are both into traditional "boy things" like trucks and trains.

I also think that adults often notice behaviors that reinforce their preconceptions more than the ones that challenge them; we’ve gotten some odd looks from other parents when we point out what a spitfire some of the girls in D’s preschool class are.  I’ve commented before on how different personalities D and N are.  It must be very easy it is for parents of opposite gender kids to assume that the differences between their children are due to gender differences. (And as families get smaller on average, fewer have multiple kids of each gender.)

It’s clear that societal and cultural factors contribute a great deal to both gender differences and the perception of them.  Jo(e) wrote recently about the shoes that girls wear, which limit their ability to climb and run.  Mieke picked up on this theme, quoting a friend’s description of how other adults interacted with her daughters:

"They would talk about Rachel and Sarah’s clothes or their hair or call them "cute" and almost always, ask Rachel and Sarah if they had boyfriends (as I said this started at three). It was kind of a default question that adults had when they didn’t know what else to say to the girls. When the girls said no, the adults seemed stumped by what else to talk about, if they said yes, they would ask all about the boy."

But it also seems that there are some differences that can’t be so easily dismissed as cultural.  There seems to be a broad consensus  that boys tend to talk later and to be potty-trained later.  Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with autism and related disorders as well as with ADHD.  (I recognize that there are cultural factors involved in how these disorders are manifested as well as in what behaviors get boys v. girls referred to a psychologist.) 

Dawn and her very thoughtful commenters at This Woman’s Work had a wonderful discussion a few weeks ago about children, gender identity, and transgenderism. Like Dawn, my fundamental goal is to allow my children to pursue their interests and enjoy their desires whether or not they conform with traditional gender roles.  That means buying D "lipstick" when he asked for it after seeing one of his classmates with it (although I wimped out and bought chapstick rather than lip gloss — he was thrilled with it anyway), but it also means letting him play endless games about shooting "bad robots" (robots because we told him he couldn’t shoot people).  And yes, I probably struggle more with the latter than with the former.

But I also agree with Dawn that

"I don’t have a problem with a boy playing like a girl or even wanting to be a girl. But I start feeling challenged when a boy says that he feels he is a girl because of these girlish interests."

This past year, the principal at the local elementary school split the 4th graders by gender for their reading period.  Her argument was that the boys were more interested in nonfiction (e.g. books about cars, animals and sports) while the girls were more interested in fiction.  Such programs — which are increasingly common — make me intensely uncomfortable.  I worry about the boy who wants to read stories, or the girl who loves baseball.  But the truth is, the regular way was clearly failing the boys — the previous year, something like 30 percent of the boys passed their reading tests, compared to 80 percent of the girls.  That’s not acceptable.

Laura at 11D tagged me for a book meme (started by John Cole) about books read as a young adult that are worth re-reading:

"So, what fiction did you read as a teen/young adult that you have re-read as an adult (or would like to)? What pieces of fiction meant something to you? Put up your list, and pass it on to 2-3 people."

I found this a surprisingly hard assignment, in spite of the fact (possibly because of the fact) that like Laura I read pretty much non-stop as a teenager.  Of all the things that I like to do now in my free time — read, cook, run, blog, take photos — reading was the only one that I did as a teen.   And I had a lot more free time then. (On the other hand, I spent a lot of time in high school playing bridge, which I haven’t done in years.)

Part of the problem is that I almost never re-read books anymore.  There are so many books I haven’t gotten to on my "to-read" list that I find it hard to justify re-reading books.  So, I’m thinking of this more along the lines of "books that I read as a teenager/young adult that I’d be thrilled to find on a bookshelf in a rental house when it rained all vacation assuming my kids were suddenly old enough to entertain themselves for a couple of hours."

Looking at Cole’s list, I see both the Narnia books* and A Wrinkle in Time.  I loved these books, and eagerly look forward to reading them with my children, but I’m pretty sure I was still in elementary school or junior high when I read them. 

So, without further ado, here are my 5 books in no particular order:

• The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula LeGuin.  Works as both a story and as a thought experiment.
• Nightfall and Other Stories, by Isaac Asimov.  The title story is, in my opinion, the best thing Asimov ever wrote. (No, I haven’t read all 300+ books that he published. But I think I’ve read all the sci-fi.) And it was his first published story, at age 17.
• And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie.  I’m pretty sure I have read all of Christie’s mysteries.  This one is especially clever, but I’d be happy to find any of them in a rainy cabin. It might even be better to find an obscure one, because I might have forgotten who done it.
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  Yes, I really did read it as a teenager.  But I have a feeling that a lot of it went over my head.  I want to give it another chance.
• My Antonia, by Willa Cather.  I don’t actually remember much of the plot of this, but I remember the feeling of intense, almost erotic, pleasure that I got reading it. 

I’ll also list a few books that aren’t nearly as profound as I thought they were as a teenager:

• Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein.  (But if you must read it, read the original version not the unedited "author’s cut".)
• Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
• The Bridge Across Forever, by Richard Bach.
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.  Funny as heck, yes.  Worth reading, yes.  But profound?  No.

If you think it would be fun to answer this meme, consider yourself tagged and leave me a trackback.

*Speaking of Narnia, any thoughts about the forthcoming movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?  The preview I saw at Revenge of the Sith looked visually impressive, but I’m not sure I want D’s first interaction with the story to be a movie rather than the books.  I’m also a little nervous about how heavy-handed they’re going to be about the Christian allegory, which went right over my head until I was older.

Last fall, I received several forwarded emails, warning me that Congress was considering a bill to reinstate the draft.  I responded to these with a link to Snopes, pointing out that the bill was introduced by Charles Rangel to make a statement against the war.  Rock the Vote’s ads were effective political theater, but not highly realistic.

In today’s column in the NYTimes, Bob Herbert does not call for reinstating the draft.  But such a suggestion is implicit in his statement that "there are limited numbers of people who will freely choose to participate in an enterprise in which they may well be shot, blown up, burned to death or suffer some other excruciating fate."  He concludes that "Increasing numbers of Americans are recognizing the inherent unfairness of the all-volunteer force in a time of war."

I don’t think that’s true.  I think increasing numbers of Americans are wondering what the heck we’re doing in Iraq and whether there’s any  way we can get out without making matters much much worse.  I think many people are pointing out that if there were a broad-based draft (e.g. without the academic and other exemptions that made the Vietnam war largely a poor kid’s fight, even though there was a draft), the low-level simmer of dissatisfaction with the war would boil over into active protest.  But if there’s a grassroots movement that’s demanding a draft, I’ve missed it.

Let’s just say that I’m much closer to jo(e)’s perspective on shoes than I am to Lawmom’s.  I like to be able to walk, and I don’t like my feet to hurt.

Don’t laugh but these are the shoes I’ve been wearing at work for much of the last, oh, 5 years.  They’re totally beat up, but they’re comfortable.  I actually bought new shoes to replace them a while ago, but the new ones hurt, so I only wear them for conferences or meetings with people outside my office.  (And I wore flats or sandals when I was pregnant.)

Last month, when I went to the doctor, I mentioned that I was starting to get a bunion on one foot.  She suggested I try wearing shoes in a size wide.  So, this week, I finally ordered two new pairs of shoes from Zappos.

They seemed ok when I tried them on, but we’ll see what happens when I actually wear them all day.

I’ve been emailing back and forth with Little Pink Flower’s mom trying to find a time that we can get together before they move out of the area.  We finally settled on a time, and then we needed to come up with a place.  She suggested a pancake restaurant, but I hate taking my older son to restaurants, since he doesn’t care enough about food for it to be a distraction, so he wants to wander around and meet everyone in the place.  I suggested a free outdoor concert, but it’s supposed to be hot and sunny, and she’s worried that the baby will burn.

Finally, I wrote: "I know you’re not supposed to do this with ‘people you’ve met over the internet,’ but it sounds like it might be simplest for you to come over here.  Would you be comfortable with that?"

I’m a long time member of several email lists and online communities, and can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten together with people I’ve met online.  I like to tell the story of the time I was riding down to Myrtle Beach for the marathon with some people from my running list.  I was squashed in a back seat that wasn’t really meant for people to sit in, so when we met up at a Wafle House with Lady G, another member of the list, and she offered me a ride in her truck, I was happy to switch vehicles.  It wasn’t for another hour that it occurred to me that I didn’t know Lady G’s last name, and that the people giving the original ride were the only ones in the world who knew who I was with.  It turned out fine, of course.

My sons are way too young to be meeting people over the computer, but I’m sure that in 10 years or so, I’ll be struggling with what boundaries to set on their encounters with people they’ve met over the internet.  I’d certainly be horrified if they were hopping rides with internet friends without my knowing who they were with.  I know there are some scary people out there, but I wouldn’t want to ban all face-to-face encounters, which have been a rich source of pleasure in my life.  I’ve got time to figure out the rules, but I suspect they’ll involve adult supervision and public meeting places.

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On a related note, if you’re a blogger, and haven’t yet taken the MIT Weblog Survey, I’d encourage you to check it out.  Their goal is "to help understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other."  In addition to the usual demographic stuff, they ask some interesting questions about the people you link to and whether you know them in real life, how often you read and comment on other blogs, what topics you discuss on your blog, and whether you know people in various occupational categories.

Once you answer the survey, you can browse the results so far.  Given the mass media focus on political bloggers, I was particularly struck by the answers to the question: What percentage of your weblog posts would you estimate are about the news, current events, or things you think are newsworthy?  I was also happy to see that, even among bloggers, I’m not the only one who never uses IM or SMS.

Last week, when I checked my email, I found a message from someone in the publicity department at Random House that began:

Hi Elizabeth, I hope you’re doing well.  Just checking in on Maria Lennon’s debut novel, MAKING IT UP AS I GO ALONG (Shaye Areheart Books, June 14, 2005); Publishers Weekly just called it, “A winning mix of humor and suspense.” It is a is a funny, sophisticated, and refreshingly original story about doing what feels right, versus the “right thing.”  I look forward to hearing from you soon about a possible piece on your site.  I’d love to send you a copy of the novel and get you in touch with Maria.  Please let me know where you would like materials sent. 

I don’t know how they came across my blog — perhaps they noticed that I had promoted The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars — but I was flattered.  The description of the book they offered screamed Mommy Lit at me — but as Jennifer Weiner points out, there are worse things in the world than to be entertaining.  So, I said, sure, send it to me; I’ll give it a read.

Unfortunately, I thought it was pretty bad.  If I hadn’t felt obligated to keep going since they sent me a free book, I probably wouldn’t have gotten past the first page, which includes the following lines:

"There was nothing in my thirty-eight years that had prepared me for the beauty of a sleeping child in the arms of its mother.  It was the face of joy and peace, as though the baby was wrapped in a shroud of faith and its soul was dancing with the angels."

Ack.  I’m also afraid that Ms. Lennon took too literally Anne Lamott’s advice from Bird by Bird that if you’re basing an unpleasant male character on a real person, you should give him a tiny penis so he won’t recognize himself.

But there’s a bigger problem with the book. The Booklist review excerpted at Amazon says that the two halves of the story — one set amid the civil war in Sierra Leone, one among rich SAHMs in Southern California — are "too disjointed to be complete."  I think that’s being kind.  If this is meant to be a frothy book about the excesses of the rich and insecure, then it’s sick to throw in a bit about child mutilations for exotic color.  And if, in the face of the suffering of war, even the main character "could not bear to read about her [friend’s] sleepless nights over the right preschool for Jeremiah or her thoughts on Cheerios as finger food," why should we, the readers, want to read about these for several hundred pages?

(Think I’ll ever get another publisher contacting me to read a new book?)

So last night, I watched FX’s new reality show 30 Days.  It’s produced by Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, and the idea is that each show is about someone immersing themself in a different way of life for, you guessed it, 30 days.  In the opening episode Morgan and his girlfriend, Alex, try to live for a month on what they can earn in low-wage jobs (the show says minimum wage, but Morgan at least earns a bit more).

The show wasn’t profound but I think it did a decent job of showing some of the hardships that low-income families face, the tradeoffs they have to make, and the ways that even a small splurge (like going out to dinner) or setback (needing to take a taxi because the buses stopped running) could make a big difference to the bottom line.  And the comments on the US health care system — how you can walk into an ER and be treated if you’re sick, but preventive care is hard to get — were totally on line.  The only thing that I think was unrealistic was that they both went to the doctor when they felt sick; most low-wage workers wouldn’t go to the ER for a sore wrist unless the bone was sticking out through their skin, and I’d guess that most would have let the UTI Alex got run its course for a few days to see if it would go away on its own before seeking medical treatment. 

And then at the very end, in wapping up, Morgan said something like "this experience has made me a better person."  I was curious as to what he meant by that.  I’m not in the school of thought that holds that poverty and suffering are inherently ennobling.  And while he certainly knows more than he did before about what it’s like to be poor, I don’t think that necessarily makes him a better person.  (I don’t think that I’m a better person than I was before I did my own one month experiment of living under the Thrifty Food Plan; less ignorant, but not a better human being.)

Turns out Spurlock has a blog, and he amplifies the comment a bit there:

Meeting people who are struggling everyday just to survive made me see that I myself didn’t do enough to help those around me. Since then, I have done more to volunteer, to reach out, to give a "hand up."

I don’t think that’s quite accurate.  I think it was the combination of meeting the people in great need and meeting the people at the Free Store, who gave him and Alex furniture, and made doing more feel possible.

Just in time for Father’s Day, the Washington Post today has a story on a study that found that states with more successful child support enforcement programs had lower overall rates of out-of-wedlock births.

This is interesting, because theory doesn’t predict which direction child support laws should affect non-marital births.  Strong child support enforcement should make it less desirable for men to father children whom they will be forced to support, regardless of their relationship with the child’s mother, but at the same time should make it more desirable for unmarried women to have children, because they’re less likely to bear all the cost themselves.  If I remember correctly, Charles Murray attacked child support laws in Losing Ground, because he thought they overall promoted nonmarital childbearing.

I haven’t read anything more about this study than what was in the newspaper, but the researchers are fairly well-respected types.  If the finding hold up, this suggests, first, that the negative incentives for men are greater than the positive incentives for women and second, that the men have a significant degree of influence on the decision.  The latter implication surprises me.